1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to an improved design and data processing system and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for designing and manufacturing products. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for generating instructions to assemble products simultaneously with the evolution of the design.
2. Background
A product may take various forms such as, for example, a single part, a subassembly, or an entire product. As a non-limiting example, the product may take the form of a wing subassembly, an engine, an audio input system, a wing spar, a flight control system, or an entire aircraft.
In designing and manufacturing products, a number of different processes may be present. Initially, an engineer or designer may generate product data for a product. This product data may include, for example, without limitation, bills of materials, attributes, requirements, and other information relating to the product.
A computer aided design application may be used to create a drawing of the product with this product data. This drawing may take the form of a two-dimensional drawing or a three-dimensional drawing and/or model. The drawings may be used to form a model for the product. The product data may be combined or associated with the model to form a product definition.
With the product definition, process plans may be created to manufacture the product. These process plans also may include work instructions, which may be used to manufacture or assemble the product. The information in the product definition for the product and manufacturing processes for creating products may be used to create work instructions for the process plans to manufacture the product.
A work instruction may provide an explanation for a step or operations that may be performed to manufacture a product. Each product or configuration of a product may have a set of work instructions. The selection of a particular product and configuration may result in the work instructions for the selection being retrieved and presented for use in manufacturing the selected product or configuration of the product.
Another difficulty may occur in managing revisions or changes to the work instructions. If an organization or company has hundreds or thousands of products, storing and maintaining these work instructions may become difficult with the addition of new products and/or changes to existing products.
When a product is designed, the model of the product is analyzed to identify work instructions needed to manufacture the product. The work instructions are entered into a database of work instructions for various products that may be manufactured. This process of creating work instructions for products that are designed may take time and may increase the expense of designing new products.
When changes to a product occur, such as part changes or changes in requirements, the work instructions for the product and every configuration for that product may need to be updated. Currently, users maintaining work instructions may be required to look up the different documents for the work instructions affected by a change and to make those changes. Although this burden may be lightened by the fact that work instructions are stored electronically, much time and effort may still be needed to update these work instructions.
For example, an engineer or designer may make changes to a product. These changes may be made using a computer aided design program to manipulate or change a model of the product. After these changes are made, the work instructions for manufacturing the product may need to be revised.
These revisions are typically made in another database containing work instructions for different products that are manufactured. Changes may be made to the design of a product in response to a number of different factors such as, for example, improvements to functionality, customer requirements, part availability, and/or other suitable factors.
Once the design changes have been made to the model, those design changes are reviewed to determine what, if any, work instructions need to be revised. The changes to work instructions may take into account changes in desired configurations, changes to add or remove steps, changes to revise product requirements in the work instruction content, or other changes.
The time and expense needed to construct and/or identify changes to work instructions may increase the cost of a product. Further, with revisions to products, the time and cost of the updates to work instructions may not always be chargeable or billable to customers.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that addresses at least one of the issues discussed above.